Reviews - The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America

9.34k reviews for:

The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America

Interesting format.

The book was not what I expected and I was disappointed at first. I kept reading and got caught up in it, like being in a time machine. Knowing what was going on have more background to Holmes and his story. The World's fair must have been brilliant. The past meeting the future, which is exactly what Holmes' crimes were.

I highly recommend this book. Brilliant read.

lucianicole's review against another edition

4.0

adventurous dark informative mysterious medium-paced

izzyhagenbuch's review against another edition

4.0

I’m glad I read this. It was interesting to learn more about Chicago’s history and the H. H. Holmes case.

The book is split pretty evenly between the case and the Chicago World’s Fair (building, during, and after). Everything was very well researched… I was just expecting it to be more about Holmes and the murders. This half of the plot was the most interesting to me, however I did still feel the anxiety of the construction team as they had to throw together this huge fair and their frustration as things kept going wrong.

The ending of the epilogue gave me chills—when the author talks about why people suspect he was the devil even after he died. Super spooky.

eli_rez's review against another edition

3.0

Suuuuch a dry read, but very informative. There’s just a lot of history alongside the true crime element so be prepared for some dense reading

davidcwolfe's review against another edition

4.0

A stellar example of narrative story telling, Larsen does a tremendous job here linking the planning and execution of Chicago’s world fair near the turn of the 20th century, with one of Americas first serial killers, HH Hughes. A wonderful drama in one of America’s most guided age cities.

sterling_was_taken's review against another edition

3.0

I am not a smart enough person to enjoy this book. The H.H. Holmes sections were far more compelling than the sections about the architecture guys, probably because they were more dramatic, but the author should've just picked one topic to write about instead of two vastly different ones.